A top-tier research professional's hand-picked selection of documents from academe, corporations, government agencies (including the Congressional Research Service), interest groups, NGOs, professional societies, research institutes, think tanks, trade associations, and more.

The ability to create lasting, trust-based friendships makes it possible for humans to form large and coherent groups. The recent literature on the evolution of sociality and on the network dynamics of human societies suggests that large human groups have a layered structure generated by emotionally supported social relationships. There are also gender differences in adult social style which may involve different trade-offs between the quantity and quality of friendships. Although many have suggested that females tend to focus on intimate relations with a few other females, while males build larger, more hierarchical coalitions, the existence of such gender differences is disputed and data from adults is scarce. Here, we present cross-cultural evidence for gender differences in the preference for close friendships. We use a sample of ~112,000 profile pictures from nine world regions posted on a popular social networking site to show that, in self-selected displays of social relationships, women favour dyadic relations, whereas men favour larger, all-male cliques. These apparently different solutions to quality-quantity trade-offs suggest a universal and fundamental difference in the function of close friendships for the two sexes.

Intimate partners coerce thousands of women in the United States into pregnancy each year through manipulation, threats of violence, or acts that deliberately interfere with the use of, or access to, contraception or abortion. Although many of these pregnancies occur within the context of otherwise abusive relationships, for others, pregnancy serves as a trigger for intimate partner violence. Beyond violence preceding or resulting from pregnancy, women who experience coerced pregnancies often suffer other physical, financial and emotional harms. Despite its correlation to domestic violence, reproductive coercion fits imperfectly, if at all, within our existing laws designed to combat domestic violence or rape. Although the harms of forced sex and, though to a slightly lesser extent, the harms of domestic violence, are well understood and accepted in our culture and our laws, the harm of experiencing a pregnancy through coercive acts remains largely invisible in both spheres, despite the prevalence of coerced pregnancies. This Article begins by filling in the missing narrative of reproductive coercion by exploring the social and legal contours of how women are coerced into pregnancy, the harms that can result, and the deep correlation between such acts and domestic violence. It then explores how our cultural and legal conflation of pregnancy with sex, motherhood and even abortion, limits our ability to isolate and understand the experience of pregnancy coercion. This Article concludes by considering how arming feminists and other advocates with an increased understanding of the interrelatedness between pregnancy, coercion, and intimate partner abuse can help to broaden domestic violence laws and policies, and reconceptualize pregnancy prevention as violence prevention.

While the majority of couples (72%) say they communicate exceptionally or very well, more than four in 10 (43%) failed to correctly identify how much their partner makes—and of that, 10% got it wrong by $25,000 or more. There were other important disconnects between couples including:

36% of couples disagreed on the amount of the household’s investible assets.

When asked how much they will need to save to maintain their current lifestyle in retirement, nearly half (48%) have “no idea”—and 47% are in disagreement about the amount needed.

When asked to estimate their Social Security payout in retirement, 60% of couples either don’t know or aren’t sure. Even more disturbing: almost half (49%) of Boomers fall into this category.

Evolutionary-minded scientists have proposed that humor is a sexually selected trait in men that signals mate quality. Indeed, women tend to prefer men who make them laugh and men tend to prefer women who laugh at their jokes. However, it is unclear how robust this pattern is. Here we report a replication of one of the first studies (Bressler, Martin, and Balshine, 2006) to examine the sex differences in preferences for humor receptivity versus humor production. We replicate Bressler et al.’s (2006) findings that men prefer women who are receptive to their humor whereas women prefer men who produce humor. These findings held even after we modified Bressler et al.’s questionnaire for better conceptual validity. Furthermore, using a separate measure designed to assess trade-offs, we found that men viewed humor receptivity as a necessity and humor production as a luxury when they were asked to create an ideal long-term partner. For women, it was just the opposite. These results bolster the claim that sexual selection has shaped sex differences regarding preferences for a prospective mate’s sense of humor and that what one means by “sense of humor” can vary.

Turns out women who are in relationships with men may have something to learn from same-sex couples when it comes to how chores at home are divvied up and how much time is devoted to work outside the home.

Women in different-sex couples are less satisfied with how household responsibilities are shared at home than men in same-sex couples; this is despite the fact that women in different-sex couples work fewer hours than men and women in same-sex couples, and men in different-sex couples. And, a greater proportion of those women stayed silent about how to share those responsibilities when they moved in with their male mate than men in same-sex relationships.

That’s unfortunate news because couples who discussed work-life issues when they moved in together ended up happier with how roles at home were structured.

This is according to a study by Families and Work Institute released today titled Modern Families: Same- and Different-Sex Couples Negotiating at Home.

Attached you will find an updated annotated bibliography on recent research pertaining to supervised visitation. These articles and resources have been summarized for your review. Please feel free to track down original source material for a more detailed look (links are provided when available). There’s lots to learn! Hope you enjoy!

The U.S. Census Bureau released new tables and figures today using the 2014 Current Population Survey’s Fertility Supplement, which includes fertility and relationship data for women age 15 to 50. The tables include information on children ever born, rates of childlessness, and relationship status at first birth for women with selected demographic characteristics. In addition, the tables and figures show historical trends in fertility.

Highlights include:

Just under 60 percent of the roughly 75 million women age 15 to 50 in 2014 were mothers and had given birth to about 95 million children.

About one in five women whose first birth occurred between January 2000 and June 2014 were cohabiting at the time of that first birth.

Women age 40 to 50 in 2014 who were in managerial or professional occupations were more likely to be childless than women of similar age in other occupations.

The number of women age 40 to 44 who had only one child roughly doubled between 1976 and 2014.

The percent of women who were 44 to 50 and childless is not different from the percent of women who were 40 to 44 and childless, suggesting that women who are childless at age 40 are unlikely to give birth later.

Among women age 20 to 50, those in the Northeast had fewer children per 1,000 women than did those in the South, Midwest or West.